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Mansa Musa was the ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa. Details recorded here should be sourced; unknown information is left blank.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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Trannyshack was a San Francisco drag club started by drag queen Heklina in 1996[1] as an offshoot of Klubstitute, and was a weekly fixture at The Stud bar in San Francisco for 12 years, drawing large crowds on a regular basis. The Tuesday night performances at The Stud ended on 12 August 2008, with Trannyshack resuming as a monthly event at DNA Lounge in March 2010.[2]
The Trannyshack stage has hosted celebrities including Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani, RuPaul, Charo, Michelle Visage, Mary Wilson and many of the contestants from RuPaul's Drag Race among others.[citation needed] In the early years of the club, Ana Matronic of the Scissor Sisters lived in San Francisco and performed frequently at Trannyshack before moving to New York in 1999.
Trannyshack ended as a weekly Tuesday night show on August 12, 2008, with "The Final Tuesday".[citation needed] Heklina claims she stopped presenting the show because its success caused it to be copied by other shows: "I felt like if everyone's trying to copy me, maybe I should try to do something different."[3] The Trannyshack name has become so popular that Heklina has filed six cease-and-desist letters against other clubs using the name.[3]
In January 2015, Trannyshack was renamed "Mother" and started taking place at Oasis, a San Francisco gay club owned by Heklina. The reason for the name change was out of respect for the transgender community, who were critical of the use of the word "tranny" as being offensive. "Mother" ended in February 2020.[4]
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The Miss Trannyshack Pageant is no longer held in a nightclub. In 2004, Trannyshack Founder and Promoter Heklina teamed up with event producer, Juan Garcia of Beatbox Events to move the event from the clubs to the Regency Ballroom. Together with Juan Garcia and the help of drag phenomena and co-hostess, Juanita More!, they have expanded the contest into a late-night dance party complete with celebrity judges, live performances, concert-like production, and special effects.
Until 2007, which marked the final Miss Trannyshack Pageant, this annual offsite event had been a pageant-style competition for the title "Miss Trannyshack." Candidates for the pageant were recruited from Trannyshack, a weekly show at the Stud Bar in San Francisco. Every week, a new theme was presented. Guests could expect a mix of everything from lowbrow trash, "old-school" traditional drag performances, avant-garde and highbrow installations, and punk-rock shows in a dance-club setting. Trannyshack guest favorites worked towards entering and winning the coveted title "Miss Trannyshack" at the annual Trannyshack pageant.
Trannyshack also holds the annual Trannyshack Reno bus trip. Hosted by Trannyshack veteran Peaches Christ and held over Easter Weekend, participants are encouraged to dress and act as outrageously and provocatively as possible. Heavy drinking is also encouraged. During the ride from San Francisco to Reno, the tour bus makes several pit stops in relatively conservative places such as Placerville and Donner Pass. The culmination of the event is a special Trannyshack show at a Reno nightclub, followed by Easter Sunday brunch the next day at a local casino.
Trannyshack also held the annual SS Trannyshack chartered boat cruise on San Francisco Bay, usually held in September, although the event was not held since 2004; however, it was announced that the event would be revived for the 2009 Folsom Street Fair.[5][6]
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Trannyshack was a San Francisco drag club started by drag queen Heklina in 1996 as an offshoot of Klubstitute, and was a weekly fixture at The Stud bar in San Francisco for 12 years, drawing large crowds on a regular basis. The Tuesday night performances at The Stud ended on 12 August 2008, with Trannyshack resuming as a monthly event at DNA Lounge in March 2010.
Steven Thor Grygelko (June 17, 1967 - April 3, 2023), known professionally as Heklina, was an American and Icelandic actor, drag queen, LGBT rights activist and entrepreneur. Born near Minneapolis, Minnesota to an Icelandic mother, he lived in Iceland for several years in the 1980s, and adopted the name "Heklina" after the Icelandic volcano Hekla. Heklina founded the San Francisco LGBT/drag nightclub and live show Trannyshack in 1996. I think that drag queens are still the eunuch clown that's safe to laugh at. It's definitively not shocking anymore. So I don't know if America's really embraced it. The early 90s was when RuPaul [was becoming famous] and it was the first time any drag queen had mainstream exposure. I don't really see a drag queen breaking out like that [again].
Monique Jenkinson (born March 8, 1971), also known as Fauxnique, is an American artist, choreographer, drag performer, and author. Her memoir, Faux Queen: A Life in Drag (ISBN 978-1-61294-221-6), was published in January 2022 by Amble Press. Jenkinson’s drag persona, Fauxnique, gained prominence in 2003 when she won the Miss Trannyshack Pageant in San Francisco, becoming the first cisgender woman to be crowned a pageant-winning drag queen. In an article published to coincide with the release of Faux Queen, arts writer Tony Bravo of the San Francisco Chronicle referred to Jenkinson as a "drag anthropologist." The anthropologist reference aligns with a pull quote on the book’s cover from singer-songwriter and cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond, who referred to Jenkinson as "The Jane Goodall of drag."
Pollo Del Mar (Paul E. Pratt) is an American drag queen performer, pro wrestling personality, journalist, activist and recording artist. As columnist, blogger and celebrity interviewer, Del Mar has hosted multiple podcasts and contributed to a wide array of print and online media outlets, both gay and straight. To date, Del Mar has released five dance music singles "How Embarrassing" (2012), "Made You Look" (2013) with Billboard charting artist Kwanza Jones, "#WhiteLadyProblems" (2014), "Rule the World (A Woman's Got the Power)" (2016) and is featured on the song "Last Night," from the 2017 album Ban2oozle by Billboard Top 5 Dance Chart recording artist and openly gay rapper Jipsta. He is heavily featured in the music video "WannaBe," a cover of The Spice Girls by Billboard Dance chart-topping artist Neon Hitch. Del Mar became a journalist via celebrity interviews on the cover of Northern California's GLOSS magazine (for which she is also a three-time cover girl), The San Francisco Bay Times and alternative weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian. She contributed celebrity-related content and interviews to The Huffington Post for over a half-decade. Presently Del Mar is a columnist and contributor to the professional wrestling magazine Pro Wrestling Illustrated. Del Mar parlayed celebrity interviews into performances with several top stars and acting, appearing onstage with Katy Perry, Iggy Azalea, Lady Gaga, talk-show hosts Wendy Williams and Ross Mathews and opened for Britney Spears during the singer's appearance on Good Morning America. On Nov. 22, 2008, Del Mar and five others opened the inaugural YouTube Live Concert event with Katy Perry, who performed chart-topping single "Hot n Cold" for a global audience of millions. On Dec. 6, 2008, he performed with Grammy-winning singer Cyndi Lauper at the Energy 92.7 Anniversary Party. Del Mar performed stand-up comedy during a June 2018 sold-out series of San Francisco shows with Real Housewives of New York City star Countess Luann de Lesseps. As an actor, Del Mar has appeared in independent feature films The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Starr and Devious, Inc., various television programs, has cameos in ABC mini-series When We Rise by Oscar-winning writer Dustin Lance Black, HBO series Looking and multiple seasons of National Wrestling Alliance series NWA Powerrr. Del Mar made his first drag appearance April 27, 2006 at a fundraiser in San Francisco's Castro District. In August 2006, she placed first runner-up in the Miss Gay San Francisco Pageant and gained further attention as "Miss October" in the 2007 Desperate Divas calendar and a subsequent series of post cards. Del Mar gained attention for her political efforts in the wake of California passing Prop 8, which would effectively ban gay marriage.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Joe Louis.
